Free Republic

The Washington Post has, over the course of this week, run what they're calling an "investigation"--a multi-part hit piece on gun dealers, blaming them for "gun crime." The series starts with Sunday's five-page article about Realco guns, in Forestville, Maryland, which has, according to the article, sold more than 2,500 "crime guns" over the last eighteen years. What the article does not do, however, is present any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the owners/operators of Realco--just the opposite: State and federal regulators have documented only minor problems in numerous inspections. We are then treated to this Orwellian quote,...

Moody's Investors Service downgraded Washington Post Co. (WPO) by a notch, saying new government rules to reduce student-loan default rates will hurt earnings at Kaplan, its biggest operating segment. The firm cut its ratings on Post Co.--publisher of the namesake newspaper--to A2, leaving it midway between Aaa and junk territory. The outlook is negative, meaning another downgrade isn't out of the question. The company was put on watch for downgrade in August. The for-profit education sector faces new rules from the U.S. Department of Education that would penalize individual programs for graduating students with high debt loads. The regulator, though,...

The deranged bending-over-backward by business and other leaders in the West to avoid offending the Islamists has gotten to the point of ridiculousness. The latest example of bowing to the intimidation of Islamic goons is by the Washington Post, which, Sunday before last, on October 3rd, decided not to run a daily cartoon because it contained the name Muhammad--no picture, mind you--just the name. It was Wiley Miller's "Non Sequitur" cartoon. The cartoon in question is a single-panel that shows a park scene with all sorts people engaged in various activities like feeding birds, flying a kite, sailing a remote-controlled...

I still ride a bike. I do 12 miles, several days a week, and as I do so I listen to music -- the Pandora service on my iPhone. I have created a station that plays folk rock. Lately, it has repeatedly played the Neil Young song "Ohio": "What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?" On the bike, I have to repress a tear. "Ohio" has been around for 40 years, and I have heard it over and over again. It's about the 1970 killing of four students at Kent State University during a demonstration...

Richard Cohen, from whom Frank L. Baum got the inspiration for Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, has completely veered off the Yellow Brick Road more than normal today. From the Washington Post: On the right, hateful words are fired like bulletsIt seems that if Scarecrow had a brain, he'd also have memories of the hatred from the Left during George W. Bush's presidency - things like death threats against him and an actual assassination movie. Fired like bullets. How does Scarecrow start his tripe-filled column? By reliving the liberal glory days of the sixties: I still ride a bike....

The Washington Post Co. says its board of directors has authorized a stock repurchase of up to 750,000 shares of its Class-B common stock, or close to 10 percent of its Class-B common shares outstanding. The company did not announce a ceiling price for the shares to be bought back or a time limit for the repurchases. At its current price, the buyback would represent about $274.5 million. There are currently 7.24 million Class-B shares out. The Washington Post’s Class-A shares, owned by the Graham family, carry more voting heft than its Class-B common shares. Washington Post stock (NYSE: WPO)...

Not every American who marches behind a hateful crackpot is a hateful crackpot. The peaceful, thoughtful throng that assembled for Louis Farrakhan at the Million Man March in 1995 -- including a young Barack Obama -- proved that point. Notwithstanding some commentary, I tend to feel the same way about the much different (and rather smaller) assemblage that gathered at the behest of Glenn Beck in Washington last Saturday. Certainly, if you’re president of the United States, the most prudent course is to draw a distinction between the leader and the anonymous masses and treat the latter with at least...

Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald Graham recently abandoned his hands-off approach to the company's cash cow, making several trips to Capitol Hill to lobby against proposed regulations that threaten earnings at Post Co.'s Kaplan Inc. for-profit-college business. The U.S. Education Department this summer proposed regulations that would tie access to federal aid programs to graduates' success in paying off loans. "They aimed at the bad actors and they wound up scoring a direct hit on schools that service low-income students," Mr. Graham said in an interview. "That cannot be what the Obama administration wants." Best known for its test -...

A growing number of Republicans are breaking with the party's traditional stance to publicly state their support for same-sex marriage, a shift strategists say stems as much from demographics as from the renewed focus on economics and the "tea party" movement. A solid majority of adults younger than 30 - about six in 10 - support the right of gay and lesbian couples to legally wed, according to a Washington Post poll in February. But even many older Americans and self-identified social conservatives have changed their view on an issue that just six years ago galvanized voters in support of...

Now that John McCain has taken care of his political business in Arizona, it is time for him to return to Washington and the responsibilities he bears as a leader of the Republican Party and the nation. (snip) One of the conspicuous failings in the past few years has been the absence of a second party making principled decisions on when to support and when to oppose the president. McCain has the best opportunity -- and the best credentials -- to restore this. (snip) It is up to McCain to choose when and how to exert the influence he commands......

EXCERPT Obama's positions are more in line with the old-line GOP defense establishment in D.C. -- people like Colin Powell and James Baker, as well as Bush holdovers who are working for Obama, like Robert Gates and David Petraeus. Yet Republican elected officials and office seekers have almost uniformly adopted the Cheney-ite critique of Obama on issues like torture, Mirandizing terrorists, and whether to close Guantanamo. In other words, the widespread opposition to Cordoba House among Republicans is only the latest installment in the ongoing Cheney-ization of the GOP. I don't need to tell you that this trend has ominous...

Greg Sargent is a Washington Post blogger and compromised JournoList hack whose “Plum Line” entries are decidedly left of center. Greg was overwhelmed with enthusiasm last Friday when, for a brief but shining moment, it appeared President Obama was supporting the construction of the ground zero mosque. He gushed that it would “go down as one of the finest moments of his presidency.” Sargent contrasted Obama’s bold stance with the “clever little dodge” which some Republicans were using. Here’s his description of the conservative stance, “The group has the right to build the center, runs this argument, but they are...

A deal to sell Newsweek to a 91-year-old stereo equipment magnate could be announced as early as today, a move that would signal the end of a half-century of ownership by The Washington Post Company.

Once upon a time you could count on the Washington Post to be accurate, even if everyone knew they were biased.   Greg Sargent of the Washington Post proves today that is no longer true.  For his latest piece has both bias and inaccuracy.  Mr. Sargent’s lack of accuracy demonstrates why the Post doesn’t have a rosy future – bias and inaccuracy is the death knell of dead-trees journalism.  The cost structure doesn’t have enough of a market that enjoys both bias and inaccuracy in their product. For starters, he reports that no states have applied for waivers from military voting...

The following 75 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect 2. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent 3. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly 4. David Dayen - FireDogLake 5. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect 6. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker 7. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America 8. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University 9. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect...

GEORGETOWN, S.C. — "The Washington Compost" is mercifully less than ubiquitous down here in the Carolina Lowcountry. That's why I was a bit surprised by the comments of a fellow customer at the Independent Seafood pier when I went to fetch some fresh catch for dinner. "I'm outraged by the classified information on our intelligence operations in that paper," he said. I quickly surmised he was referring to the much-hyped "Top Secret America" series in The Washington Post. Very upset by what he had read in the WaPo, he didn't hesitate to tell me why. "I'm calling my congressman and...

"Really, it's not him, it's you."Journolist may be gone but the brain-dead mantra generating machine continues its uncritical support of The Lightbringer. Not only do six out of 10 voters "lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country," according to a Post-ABC News poll, but Barack Obama does not even get credit for the right decisions he's made. The bank bailout averted a financial crackup and the stimulus package pulled the economy back from the abyss. Along with reform of the financial industry and health care, these are considerable achievements. Only the voters disagree. Stupid...

Media Liberals on 'JournoList' Plotted to Bury the Jeremiah Wright Story in 2008 By Tim Graham Created 07/20/2010 - 08:14 The Daily Caller [1] has another scoop on the leftist JournoList e-mails today, recalling when liberal scribes all wanted the Jeremiah Wright story to be dead and buried in the spring of 2008. Jonathan Strong explained "Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage." Stephanopoulos...

With two Pulitzer Prizes to her name, Dana Priest is one of the Washington Post’s most celebrated reporters. Until Monday, when the Post published the first installment of a bombshell series on post-9/11 intelligence industrial complex, national security blogger William Arkin was hardly known to the paper’s readers. But from a media perspective, Arkin’s role as co-author of the series might be the more important. It marks the first time one of the Post’s bloggers – lately the cause of controversy because they sometimes blur opinion and reporting — has had a byline in one of the paper’s big, investigative...

Howard Kurtz whines that “[Conservative] candidates seem to regard it as an affront when reporters challenge them on their past statements and inconsistencies, which is a basic function of journalism. They are avoiding or limiting interviews with all but the friendliest faces as a way of circumventing the press. And some of them delight in skewering the mainstream media, a tactic that plays well with their base.” It’s interesting that Kurtz doesn’t mention the Obama administration’s attempt to boycott Fox News, and its ongoing complaints about that network. Conservative aversion to the media is indicative of a key fact about...